Cathy Holland-Smith with the Legislative Services Offices is now getting ready to address JFAC.

“We budgeted at a level last that was sustainable based on the revenues we projected,” she said.

The fiscal year 2010 — the one we’re in now — had virtually no cash balance — just $13,400 to start.

“Agencies came back with some plans of their own that were a little different,” she said.

Part of the governor’s recommendation is taking $20 million from the economic recovery reserve fund to patch the budget hold, Holland-Smith said.

The dairy research center planned for near Twin Falls won’t happen for now.  The original amount was to $10 million, is now $9.4 million that will go into the general fund instead of for the dairy center.

“The governor felt the timeing was not there to maintain that,” Holland-Smith said.

“We begin to cut the budget in 2009 before the indicators were firm first of all that the recession is coming,” Holland-Smith said.

She didn’t try to sugarcoat the state’s financial outlook.

“We’ll see 2011 will basically be using up all of the resources we have,” she said.

The budget proposal, she said, is “built on a series of assumptions and each one of these assumptions go to balance the budget.”

For example, selling the parks and recreation headquarters building would generate $5 million under the plan, but that’s not guaranteed.

“In essence there’s only a small amount of inflationary increases,” Holland-Smith said.

“You’re still in the hole about $220 million,” Sen. Dean Cameron, co-chairman of JFAC said, pointing to the estimated ending balance of $480 million in the hole the requested items, which seek far more funding than the governor’s recommendations.

The budget recommendation from Otter for fiscal year 2011 is $2.57 billion, with $218.7 million coming from one-time sources that include reserves and federal stimulus.

“It’s not a very pretty onion,” Cameron said, referring to the budget process as peeling an onion.